Posts by Joshua Arbury
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Sure it wasn't, Rochelle! Sorry - couldn't help myself, reading over your shoulder
It was Rochelle's laptop.
I note that David Farrar didn't manage much of a live blog:
http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2009/06/mt_albert_backbenches.html -
We (luckily) made it to The Neighbourhood bar early -8ish? & it was already packed. Got a spot by the bar next to the blogger from The Standard. Loads of fun, although the catcalls, cheers & boos made a lot of the responses hard to hear.
LOL. That would have been me. Though it definitely wasn't MY pink laptop!
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If all decisions were made via referendum I'm sure we'd end up voting for lower taxes, more spending and lower debt.
Reminds me of United Future's economic policies actually.
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The problem with local government is not its spending, but rather its funding. Surely it would make sense for councils to get a share of GST spent in their areas?
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Joshua, have you seen the ARC's own submission to the Royal Commission? I heard it recommends one Council and 20 to 30 local boards, but I haven't gone and read it yet.
I think the ARC called them "Community Councils" and they had a heck of a lot more power than the government's proposed "local boards".
If the power of the local boards does end up being enshrined in law then we could end up with quite a similar outcome to what the ARC proposed. Which I would probably be pretty comfortable with as if there's any council I actually to trust in Auckland it would be the ARC.
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I reckon the Royal Commission's proposal could have effectively created that "empowered ARC" model that a lot of people seem pretty keen on.
The 6 local councils would have fought tooth and nail to hold onto as many current jobs as possible - and people would have probably supported that to some extent in their submissions. Perhaps only planning and transportation would have been transfered up to the Auckland Council with most other stuff being carried out by the still large, still empowered, local councils.
Of course the government hates the ARC. They run against its roads-fetish, its love of urban sprawl and its care for the environment. Hence the need to change the Auckland Council from the "beefed up ARC" that the Royal Commission would have created to an "enlarged Auckland City Council with community boards" that John Banks has wet dreams about leading.
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Indeed, it took me a while to realise it was a piss-take and not actually Michael Laws.
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I assume that's a piss-take?
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Steve, that's brilliant.
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He seems convinced that the plural of "text" is "textes".
I always thought it was just "texts". Sounds much better really.